Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Bender On Turnips
Having fond memories of the one and only time that I had eaten turnips, years past at a family dinner at my mother in law's, I decided to make them for myself. I knew that I wanted them, I arrived at the decision to make them for myself when my wife told me that she, "wasn't about to cut them up" because they were too hard.
We both went on our way to Shaw's Supermarket in Easton where I found them in the produce isle. Looking them over two things became apparent. a) they were definitely "dug up" and b) they were hard as a rock. I decided to look for a pre-made package in the frozen food aisle. Striking out there, we headed for the check out. As I loaded our items on to the belt I glanced at the magazine rack for some soft porn and low and behold there was a native turnip sitting all alone, the victim of someone's second thoughts. Obviously a clear cut case of "meant to be", I handed it to the cashier and we headed home.
OK, cutting this thing up wasn't easy but like many in our generation I wasn't going to be denied. The tougher it became the more I wanted to devise a strategy to make the process easier. I did finally "cube" my Turnip properly and commenced the parts to boiling. The final product was great, just like I remembered it - although if you put on enough butter and salt on a vegetable...
Like other parents in our generation I drive my kid's around. I drive my kids to the bus stop. One girl walks. Her house is 100 yards away. My kid's think it is at best cruel, and at least unusual. While watching her make her way to the bus the other day the kids and I had a talk about the time that I forgot to take my sneakers to basketball practice.
It was ninth grade Bicknell, the year that the gym was under construction. I never got the chance to play a home game in "Bicknell White". Never got to play in the old gym with the balcony in front of my classmates. Because of the construction all of our games were away. A good thing really, as I was new to the game and didn't know all of the rules. The first time I was put into a game the coach tapped me on the shoulder and when he gave me the word I just got up and just jogged on the court without waiting for play to stop. One of my earliest memories of Kevin was his face as I passed him the ball while he was in the back court. That stuff was better done in front of people from East who had a better chance of forgetting by high school.
Because we had no gym we had to walk from Bicknell to the Wessagusset Elementary School each day for practice. Aside from the walk the worst thing about using Wessagusset's gym was that the floor was nothing more than white tile over concrete, covered in a fine layer of dust. I know that someone must have broken a knee cap but in those days, especially in North Weymouth, no one's thoughts would have turned to the matter of liability: back then it was no helmets - no problems.
One day I forgot my sneakers (hence the title of the story) and coach "Sleep" Rosenberg made me walk home to 341 Green Street and back to get my $19.95 white Converse All-stars. No cell phone was there to save me, but I was prepared. I used to walk from Green Street to North High every day with Keith, Dave Carson and Ted Lewis; rain, snow or shine. I remember walking down King Oak Hill each dark and cold winter's night with Harry and Dalton after High School Practice, turning home knowing that they still had to walk all the way to the beach.
As I came to the end of my story the kid's and I tried to put the experience into some set of circumstances that they could relate to but we couldn't. Nothing in their comfortable and cloistered world came close to walking any significant distance. Face Book has replaced healthy long walks home from school talking face to face. Will the time they spend sitting in front of the computer be their downfall? Will drugs like Lipitor keep them alive?
Hundreds of years from now we may evolve into large brain humanoids, geared to deal with the ever more complex set of cerebral circumstances of the day and we may be medicated to do it over a long stretch of time. The human race is geared to survive. I just hope that the Americans will be there at the end with the countries that are more physically active than we are now.
Having been through the process, I can see that the days that the freshly prepared Turnip has above ground are numbered - it's just too hard. I went the extra mile and put in the work to make them "for myself" but I did look in the frozen food aisle for Turnips before finding the real thing among the checkout line tabloids filled with pictures of women with silicone breast implants. I wanted to sit in front of the computer while someone else cooked them for me.
I need to do more physically. Hard yes, but today's pharmacology won't take care of my atrophy. And what about all of the butter and salt? Will Lipitor be enough to prolong my life? I am a baby boomer. We grew up playing outside and I need to get back to my roots. I have a cell phone that makes calls and a mp3 player that holds 4,000 songs but I am drawing the line at "Apps", I'm not going there. I need to divorce myself from staring at electronic devices and get back outside. I am getting a bike for Christmas. Now I've just got to use it. If you see me riding from Easton to Weymouth I'll be wearing a helmet.
POSTED BY BENDER on December 8, 2009
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Comments
We cut up our home grown ugly green monster (the opposite of the silicone breast) Hubbard squashes by hurling them down on the patio bricks. Maybe Pat can beat his next turnip with his new bike helmet!
Posted by: Paul Niles | December 19, 2009 08:35 AM
I was once told by a friend that the key to successful Blogging was brevity. One of the keys to a successful friendship is honesty.
Posted by: Bender | December 24, 2009 04:22 AM